Well, it’s day 6 and the PSN is still down. Looting started about 24 hours ago, there have been reports of rape, murder, and even cannibalism. The streets are not safe, and as the great adviser Antoine Dodson once said “You bedda, hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife…”, it is pure anarchy out there. Or so the Internet would like you to believe; however, the real story is much less exciting. What’s really happening is a bunch of journalists stirring the hate pot with their dicks. The PSN has been compromised and Sony is diligently working on fixing the current holes in their security systems for the PSN. This sucks if you own a PS3 and you want to play online, but you have to understand Sony’s position on this.

Am I just a fanboy trying to defend Sony for a mistake they made? No, not in the slightest, the issue of the PSN being down reaches far beyond your inconvenience of being able to “snipe noobs” in Black Ops. Each day that the PSN is down, the PlayStation Store is equally down. With the PlayStation store down, nothing is being purchased, therefore Sony is effectively losing truck loads of money each day the service is down. Lets be clear here, Sony is not working around the clock to get the PSN back up so that you can check your friend’s trophy list, they are doing so because they are losing money. I hate to be the one that breaks the fantasy of Jack Tretton riding a Unicorn saving the PSN from the evil hacker monster, but Sony is in business to bring you entertainment for your money. Without our money there is no Sony, without the PlayStation store running, there is no… um… your money going to Sony.

Speaking of losing money, when Xbox Live shuts down for a few days unexpectedly, Microsoft loses money and so do you. Time is money, and you pay for your time monthly or yearly with Xbox Live, which means you andMicrosoft are losing money. This is much like how MMO’s work – you pay for your time on the server, if the server is down because of… let’s say… a giant tsunami hits japan and FFXI goes offline? Then yes, you are entitled to some kind of refund or credit. However, since the PSN is a free service provided by Sony… When the service goes down it’s an inconvenience, but you aren’t losing anything you have invested into it, other then being able to waste your free time playing games. Sony however is still losing money and you’re not. Do you see what I’m getting at yet?

But what about PS Plus users… they pay. Yes, they do. However, what they pay for is discounts and free items. If the PSN is down, you won’t be able to buy anything. As soon as it goes up, you will, and you didn’t lose any of your time for the service. If this outage lasts past Tuesday, you could then argue that you are missing out on a new game that you could have bought with your discount, and you lost a day out of your year subscription to Plus. If that’s honestly your best argument, then you are a very sad individual. You are also partially right and partially wrong. Think of Plus like a Sam’s Club card, Costco card or even Amazon Prime. What you are paying for is access to items at a discounted rate – if Sam’s Club closes on Easter, you aren’t going to get a reimbursement of the items you “might have bought” on that day. More than likely you will just go out and buy them the next day. If anything, the impulse idea that you had about buying “that” game might wear off because you had to wait and you may choose not to buy it. And yet again Sony loses, not you.

It’s also worth noting that if you paid for a year subscription when Plus was first announced (in which you got 3 extra months), the amount of money you lost in your subscription for 5 days is about 54 cents. In other words Sony barely owes you a free Avatar. If you think Sony owes you something for this outage, you are just looking for a handout and you need to grow up. You may be saying “Well, you would be thinking differently if you were a Plus subscriber”… well guess what? I am a Plus subscriber, and you know what I’m thinking about more than what they should give me for not being able to buy things at a discounted rate for a few days? I’m thinking, why the hell did I even buy this in the first place? Have I even saved any money? That’s honestly a whole other post worth of rants (that I’m working on). If you still think that Sony owes you something after all this logic laid neatly out on a table with graphs and charts, then I leave you with this small chunk of text from the PSN Terms and Conditions:

15. WARRANTY DISCLAIMER AND LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
No warranty is given about the quality, functionality, availability or performance of Sony Online Services, or any content or service offered on or through Sony Online Services. All services and content are provided “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” with all faults. SCEA does not warrant that the service and content will be uninterrupted, error-free or without delays. In addition to the limitations of liability in Sections 1, 2, 11 and 13 of this Agreement, SCEA expressly disclaims any implied warranty of merchantability, warranty of fitness for a particular purpose and warranty of non-infringement. SCEA assumes no liability for any inability to purchase, access, download or use any content, data or service

Reading is not only fun, it’s fundamental. Maybe you should try it next time you sign up for something.

/rant

*UPDATE* In light of the new information about personal information I still stand behind my original post. The fact that our personal information has been compromised is not something I’m happy about but it requires further discussion. For more on this topic look out for our next podcast this week.